I've been a fan of former Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer for a while, especially in the field of campaign finance, in which he defended Montana's prohibition against corporate money in its elections all the way up to the Supreme Court, at which point the Nine Wise Souls dropped Citizens United on his head and eliminated everything Montana had learned so painfully during the previous Gilded Age. Of course, the fact remains that there are loose cannons and then there are loose cannons, and then there's Schweitzer, rolling across the deck and discharging into the powder magazine.

This was the week that Sen. Dianne Feinstein took to the Senate floor to accuse the CIA of spying on congressional staffers investigating the agency's treatment of terrorism suspects under the Bush administration. Schweitzer is incredulous that Feinstein-considered by her critics to be too close to the intelligence community-was now criticizing the agency. "She was the woman who was standing under the streetlight with her dress pulled all the way up over her knees, and now she says, 'I'm a nun,' when it comes to this spying!" he says. Then, he adds, quickly, "I mean, maybe that's the wrong metaphor-but she was all in!"

(It wasn't the only time Schweitzer was unable to hold his tongue. Last week, I called him on the night Majority Leader Eric Cantor was defeated in his GOP primary. "Don't hold this against me, but I'm going to blurt it out. How do I say this ... men in the South, they are a little effeminate," he offered when I mentioned the stunning news. When I asked him what he meant, he added, "They just have effeminate mannerisms. If you were just a regular person, you turned on the TV, and you saw Eric Cantor talking, I would say-and I'm fine with gay people, that's all right-but my gaydar is 60-70 percent. But he's not, I think, so I don't know. Again, I couldn't care less. I'm accepting.")